Test Ban Treaty: June 1962 (Timeline 102762 - Countdown to War) by James Philip

Author:James Philip [Philip, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Saturday 16th June 1962

Cambridge Barracks

Sliema

Malta

Twenty-four-year-old Lieutenant the Honourable Michael David Lawrence had not been overjoyed to be posted to the Mediterranean, and even less impressed – just as he was getting comfortable – to be turfed out of his office at the Castile de Auberge, the Headquarters of Malta Command in Valletta, and despatched first to a depot staff role at the Pembroke Barracks, a little farther up the east coast of the main island, and seven days ago, sentenced to a new ‘nothing job’ at Sliema. It all went to show that if a fellow inadvertently made advances, or his case merely gave the appearance of innocently flirting to, the wrong senior officer’s daughter the Army had a very long memory, and a damned near global reach to go with it!

It was all his bloody father’s fault.

The old rascal had acquired a peerage after he lost his seat in Parliament in 1959, recognition that what with the boundary changes to his constituency he had always been onto a loser and that was how, being the second son, ‘David’ had come by his meaningless ‘Honourable’ appellation. Being the son of the wrong kind of ‘lord’ – the entirely political, only marginally upper-middle class sort that had never gone to the right schools and spent most of the war in a prisoner of war camp in Bavaria – had done him few favours in his last term at Sandhurst, or since; not for him a plum commission in the Blues and Royals or the Guards, he had had to make do with the Warwickshire Regiment, with whom he was presently surplus to requirements and therefore, had found himself posted ‘abroad’ at the end of last year.

And now, among the list of responsibilities the Adjutant in these parts had lumped onto him was the oversight of the remnants of the garrison’s unwanted, best out of sight and mind, Field Service Section, half-a-dozen beefy Redcaps at a distinctly loose end under the command of a staff sergeant of the type who no doubt was thoroughly accustomed to intimidating the living daylights out of unfortunates like him, fresh out of England who were supposed – nominally at least – to be in charge.

The man, Staff Sergeant James Albert Siddall, was presently standing in front of his desk. Built like a heavyweight boxer in training, even at ease, feigning respect, he looked perfectly capable of breaking Lawrence in half.

“Pull up a chair, Staff,” he ordered. There was no point trying to impose his authority on this man; not if he actually wanted him to be on his side. Moreover, if the bloody fellow did not sit down, he was going to get a crick in his neck to add to his other, rapidly multiplying woes.

“Thank you, sir,” the big man in the crisp, khaki fatigues acknowledged gruffly. There was a scraping of chair legs and presently, he was seated, ramrod straight eying Lawrence inscrutably, waiting for him to make the next move.

“What do you

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